Ideal pre-race warmup



Bikeridindude

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Mar 13, 2006
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What would be the best warmup prior to a 8-10 minute prologue? Based on past experiences, the given rider will maintain about 365 watts for the duration. Suggestions? Thanks!
 
Bikeridindude said:
What would be the best warmup prior to a 8-10 minute prologue? Based on past experiences, the given rider will maintain about 365 watts for the duration. Suggestions? Thanks!

I have found this site has excellent advice:

http://www.flammerouge.je/content/3_factsheets/constant/warmup.htm

Incidentally, most of our TT's here are about the duration you'll be doing. For myself, I like to follow the method on Flamme Rouge's site, and then do short spinups, "revving the engine" so to speak, until I get up to the hr/power I expect to do in the event. The whole warmup takes me about 45 minutes-1 hour for something like that. But, just like the article says, you'll have to adapt the warm-up routine to your preferences and temperament.
 
BikingBrian said:
I have found this site has excellent advice:

http://www.flammerouge.je/content/3_factsheets/constant/warmup.htm

Incidentally, most of our TT's here are about the duration you'll be doing. For myself, I like to follow the method on Flamme Rouge's site, and then do short spinups, "revving the engine" so to speak, until I get up to the hr/power I expect to do in the event. The whole warmup takes me about 45 minutes-1 hour for something like that. But, just like the article says, you'll have to adapt the warm-up routine to your preferences and temperament.
Thanks for the link, looks like a good technique. I'll give it a shot.
 
When you wade through the extra fluff in that article and get to the core of what's important (the routine), he's basically OK but to be more power specific, since this is the power forum:

1) He's right about longer warm-ups for shorter events.
2) I like to spin for a few minutes and look at my power reading gradually come up without forcing it. If I can naturally produce more power at basically the same cadence (shifting to harder gears when I feel like it) and it feels good and natural and not hard, I know that the legs are working and ready for more. This usually takes much less than 20 minutes, maybe 8-10. Then some time in L3/L4, the amount will depend upon how long the race is. I'm done when I feel ready for the next step (below).
3) I think his "hard bits" aren't long and hard enough. If you're warming up for a short TT or a crit, I would want to spend a few minutes above FTP (~105-110%). I usually do this in 2-4 chunks of 1 minute each with a few minutes recovery between. This lets you accumulate some lactate and clear it. Then probably 1-2 sprints of 15-30 seconds at ~120% or more. Do these on the road and not on your trainer. (More important for a crit than a TT, of course.)
4) For a RR, maybe not as many >FTP bits and I might force myself into the upper L3/L4 area (rather than a more gradual increase) since I'm usually warming up on the road (as opposed to rollers/trainer), don't have the luxury of that controlled riding environment. I usually find that I don't need as much warm-up time in a RR and I want to get it over with too.
5) http://www.cycle-smart.com/articles/find.php?search=44
6) What hasn't been said here is the the importance of your "opening up" ride the day beforehand. If you are "open" your warm-up should go very well and you can kill it at the start of the race. If not...well...you might be a sluggish for the first 10 laps of the criterium, which means you might be screwed. I've found that a warm-up can't always make up for being "shut down" because you didn't do a good opening up ride the day before. http://www.cycle-smart.com/articles/find.php?search=16
 
+1 Steve, BikingBrian's link is good but I basically do what you describe with a bit less initial easy spinning, a bit more time up in Tempo and a bit longer L4/L5 efforts.

For TT's I really like to get a full 2.5 to 3 minutes at solid L5 about twenty minutes before my start. It's kinda scary as it's not a comfortable effort and I've got to trust in my training base to do something like that before a TT but I've found it really prepares me for the upcoming effort and is a great reminder to pace my start and not get sucked into L5 during the opening minutes of a longer TT.

BTW, being able to confidently do a longer and a bit harder warmup is one benefit of deeper training base or higher CTL in powerspeak. With a CTL in the 90 to 100 range and a typical daily training dose of 125+ TSS I can approach a longer and more intense warmup with confidence knowing it won't kill my race. Early season with lower CTL I'm a bit more hesitant to spend as much time or effort warming up. But in the case of a short intense prologue like the OP is talking about I really need to be ready to hit the ground running and that only happens with a solid warmup.

-Dave



Steve_B said:
When you wade through the extra fluff in that article and get to the core of what's important (the routine), he's basically OK but to be more power specific, since this is the power forum:

1) He's right about longer warm-ups for shorter events.
2) I like to spin for a few minutes and look at my power reading gradually come up without forcing it. If I can naturally produce more power at basically the same cadence (shifting to harder gears when I feel like it) and it feels good and natural and not hard, I know that the legs are working and ready for more. This usually takes much less than 20 minutes, maybe 8-10. Then some time in L3/L4, the amount will depend upon how long the race is. I'm done when I feel ready for the next step (below).
3) I think his "hard bits" aren't long and hard enough. If you're warming up for a short TT or a crit, I would want to spend a few minutes above FTP (~105-110%). I usually do this in 2-4 chunks of 1 minute each with a few minutes recovery between. This lets you accumulate some lactate and clear it. Then probably 1-2 sprints of 15-30 seconds at ~120% or more. Do these on the road and not on your trainer. (More important for a crit than a TT, of course.)
4) For a RR, maybe not as many >FTP bits and I might force myself into the upper L3/L4 area (rather than a more gradual increase) since I'm usually warming up on the road (as opposed to rollers/trainer), don't have the luxury of that controlled riding environment. I usually find that I don't need as much warm-up time in a RR and I want to get it over with too.
5) http://www.cycle-smart.com/articles/find.php?search=44
6) What hasn't been said here is the the importance of your "opening up" ride the day beforehand. If you are "open" your warm-up should go very well and you can kill it at the start of the race. If not...well...you might be a sluggish for the first 10 laps of the criterium, which means you might be screwed. I've found that a warm-up can't always make up for being "shut down" because you didn't do a good opening up ride the day before. http://www.cycle-smart.com/articles/find.php?search=16
 
Thank you Dave and Steve for the excellent information. Tonight's the night! I'll try it out and see how it works.
 
swampy1970 said:
So, how'd it go?
Went pretty darn good, set a PR (8:50) by 28 seconds. I've hardly done any VO2 work yet either, so that makes me pretty happy looking into the future. I bought a new bike with Shimano components and my PT is Campy, so I didn't use the PM for the race but I warmed up on the trainer with it. I read through all the suggestions and also looked at Richard Stern's website and put them all together into something like this:

5 minutes 150W
5 minutes 200W
10 minutes 230W
5 minutes 150
1 minute 335
3 minutes 150
1 minute 335
3 minutes 150
1 minute 355
3 minutes 150
got all my **** gathered up and put away went on the road and did a couple of 30 sec's trying to be around 370 or so.

The race was actually a hillclimb, 7% for 2 miles. I like Dave's idea about going a little bit longer stretches in the VO2 range during warmup, but I think my CTL is around 80 or 90, so was a little afraid to. Later in the year I will. Thanks everyone for the advice and links, seemed to work really well. Any other recommendations?
 

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